Retiring and Repurposing Coal Plants: Technology choice, economic issues and prospective business models

Encina Commons archway
Date
Tue April 26th 2022, 4:00 - 5:00pm

Decarbonizing India and Africa Workshop Series

Retirement of coal plants – be it policy-driven closure or a more normal market-driven attrition – has become more commonplace in the last few years. However, accelerating coal transition is still almost an academic topic at least in the vast majority of the countries including China, USA and India that account for 75% of the global coal fleet. Repurposing coal plants for these to become RE+FLEX centers has the potential to catalyze this process as it can lower the exit barrier and support RE developments. Deb will briefly discuss World Bank’s experience over the last year or so in developing coal retirement and repurposing projects in South Africa, India and Vietnam around selection of technologies for alternative use of the site. Deb will also share preliminary findings from an exploration of different business models for coal retirement.

About the Speaker: Debabrata Chattopadhyay

Deb leads the power systems planning group at the World Bank in Washington DC. He is a power system engineer and an economist . He held a tenure-track position at University of Canterbury until late 2000, and is currently an Adjunct Professor of Electrical Engineering (Power System) at the University of Queensland and University of Melbourne(Australia). Deb has been in a full-time consulting role from 2001-2012 as a Director with Charles River Associates (2001-2009) and Deloitte Australia (2009-2012).